In the Land of the Dronese/Book1
Chapter 1: The Loss of Earth The near loss of civilization on Earth during the hot afternoon of August 1st, 4096, was not only out of the blue to the people who witnessed the bombings, but nearly drove the human race to extinction. A few humans survived the war, and while a few created new towns that grew and grew over the years, one person had a more exciting lifestyle than putting down mutants or getting sick from radiation poisoning. His name was Alistar "Ace" McNiall, and he was, oddly enough, vacationing in Cobh, an Irish town on the coasts of County Cork when the war began and ended. The reason why he was vacationing was because he had finally graduated from the University of Ireland with a Bachelor’s degree in computer engineering. Ace went to the vacation town with his older sister, Siobhan, and would have spent a week at the town if the war had not happened. On the night before the war, Ace had stayed up until 5 AM in the morning, and slept for quite a while. It was 2 PM when she woke him up with some horrifying news. She was watching Ireland's national news, mostly based in Drogheda, when it quickly cut to an odd segment. The middle-aged reporter sat behind the desk, which had a single paper on it, and began to report the contents of it. “This just in from Drogheda, Ireland, there are confirmed reports of an odd flying object unlike any in this area. A few cities around the globe have witnessed such phenomen-" And those were the last words that the reporter said before the screen turned into colored bars. A minute later, it cut to a Chinese man filming from the inside of a news van. He had fear and panic on his face as he told watchers about what the object was. "To everyone who lives in a major city in Ireland, EVACUATE! We repeat, EVACUATE! It has been confirmed that the 'odd objects' is actually a nuclear missile!” She had then switched to the local news channel. There, the staff somehow got word that the infamous country known as Kremano Noec had launched around 843 nuclear missiles to destroy what believed to be the lesser people. It was believed that Kremano got the funds to create all of the missiles from their takeover of neighboring countries, such as Korea and Northeast China. As soon as Ace heard it, he got up and quickly got his clothes on. Running outside, he saw residents, tourists, and homeless alike staring into the distance in pure horror. They stood so still that when Ace bumped into them to see what they were looking at, none of them stumbled over. After passing by a lot of people, he got the chance to see what they were looking at. Once he did, he completely understood why so many people were shocked at one simple thing. They were staring into the direction of where Cork would have been, if a nuclear bomb hadn’t obliterated everything within a two-mile radius and cover the remains with a mushroom cloud. After a few minutes, the news channel reported that the second wave of missiles from Kremano Noec had been launched, and there were a lot more missiles this time around. 510 nuclear missiles were reported to have been launched, with 1,911 regular missiles alongside it. However, in response to the first wave, 1,024 missiles were launched from other nations aimed directly for Kremano Noec. Most of them were from North America, with 102 from what remained of Manchuria, 87 from Japan, and 55 from Great Europe. Suddenly, police cars started surrounding the area, and the officers got out of the cars, telling everyone to stay calm and evacuate the city before a missile would hit it. As ferry boats neared the dock, people already started throwing themselves onto the boats, sometimes missing and getting crushed between the dock and the boat. People swarmed into the ferry boat, often overcrowding them, until all six were filled to the brim. The boats left the dock, but a few people were left behind, especially Ace and his sister. Ace said to an officer “Harrumph! If they were less picky about where the people would be placed, we would have got on those boats, ya know?” The officer replied “Well, you could always leave by road, you know. I wouldn't advise it, though...” "I'm doing it anyways! Besides, I bet Kremano would fire a nuke at this place anyways!" After 'thanking' the officer, Ace and Siobhan got into the car they came to the town with, and drove off. While they were heading down the coastline Ace said “Well, at least we don’t have to worry about being killed, huh? All we need to do is find a place to hide until the nukes stop.” Thirty or so minutes after they had escaped the vacation town, Ace heard a rumble, and looked back. The town Ace had just vacationed in had been destroyed by a nuke, just like the hometown they had come from. Despite the shock, the nuking of the vacation town wasn’t the event that made Ace nearly swerve off a cliff. It was the fact that the car was nearly out of gas. Thankfully for them, they had just reached a gas station before the car ran out of fuel. When Ace looked at the prices for gas, he slightly chuckled; a gallon of gas was €0.52, when normally, a gallon would be €7.98. The employee of the gas station, Toird, said “Did you see those explosions back there? I mean, who would do this?” Ace sighed, and said “It was Kremano Noec. Not surprising, isn’t it?” Toird agreed, and proceeded to fill the car up with gas. Ace and his sister left the gas station, and drove for seven hours. Thankfully, a radio station run by the famous voice actor Johnny Kornix kept them entertained by playing songs about nuclear war and making fun of the companies that Johnny would sponsor on his show if they hadn’t been wiped off the face of the Earth. "Well, if anybody's still alive after those hours of hellfire, radiation, and riots, you deserve a medal. I live here in this radio station, so my house wasn't destroyed by one of those destruction rods! Now, it's time for some commercials!" '' The commercials began to play, but it was stopped very prematurely. ''"Psych! Who needs ads when you don't even have the comapny anymore? Now, back to the music!" Two days passed, and Ace and his sister went through multiple small towns on the coast. Almost everybody was dead due to riots, and the ones who lived gave the two supplies to live upon. Ace had to create a plan somehow. After parking in an abandoned Subway, he pulled out an atlas of Ireland and glanced at it. After a few minutes, and quite a few questions from Siobhan, Ace finally had a plan. “We’re going to Corrán Tuathail through Killarney, if it's not destroyed”, said Ace. "I have a feeling that somebody's picking up survivors there. If not, we'll camp there until somebody arrives." After that, they hit the road again, and for almost a week, they kept driving and getting cans of gas. Finally, they had reached it. The tallest point in Ireland was in front of them. As Ace and Siobhan hiked the mountain, they realized that a few people were there, too. In fact, there were three people there. The closest and tallest of the three was wearing a brown overcoat, holding a weird pistol, and had baggy jeans. The other two men were in scientist garb, and were talking to the overcoat man. Ace was about to shout “Hey, who are you guys?” when the man in the brown overcoat turned around. Ace realized that the man wasn’t exactly human. The overcoat man wasn’t wearing a shirt for whatever reason, but his entire torso had weird square slabs sticking out. He was also very tall, being around 7’3 and dwarfing the 6’2 Ace. The two scientists were like the overcoat man, but had less plates on their body, were human sized, and had very tan skin. One of the scientists had brown hair, while the other had black. Ace stood still, as the overcoat man walked up to him. He turned his head to his left shoulder, and then to his right. Finally, his neck was straightened, and he started shouting some weird language that Ace did not understand. “Velene peek zek xan veseal?” Ace cracked up at the weird language that the overcoat man was speaking. The brown-haired scientist came up to the man in the overcoat and whispered something. After clearing his throat, the overcoat man said “Why did you come here?” In response, Ace said “Well, we came here to wait for somebody to take us to a safer place. Why are YOU here?” The black-haired scientist said “We’re trying to take some people to a place that's safer than this doomed land... people like you.” “People like me?” said Ace, “Hah! I think you should have come earlier, because there’s probably 800 million people left on this world or somethin’.” “I know, I know, but it takes around a thousand years to get from Dronia to Earth, and even longer to get from Earth to Dronia!” “Wait, Dronia? What the hell are you talking about?” The overcoat man started to chuckle, while the brown-haired scientist rudely nudged him. “That’s what most people say about Dronia,” said the black-haired scientist. “However, we can’t exactly fill you in on the details right now. We’ve got to get you into our ship, yes.” All three of the men started to walk near the side of the mountain. At first, it looked like they were walking towards nothing. But then, a 350 foot long black object began to appear. The black-haired scientist pressed his hand against a hatch on the side. It opened in a flash, and the three boarded the spaceship. As soon as Ace and his sister got on, and the door instantly shut. The interior of the spaceship was very odd, comprising of various tubes, control panels, and wheeled chairs. The overcoat man sat down on the commander’s chair, and started the ship’s engines. The loud roar startled Ace and Siobhan at first, but after a few seconds, they got used to it. The ship started lifting off the ground, and after twenty seconds, Ace could see most of Ireland. Eventually, the ship reached space, and the overcoat man turned off the engines. Even though all fourteen engines were off, the ship kept going the same speed it had when it was lifting off Earth. The brown-haired scientist walked up to Ace. “So, now that we’re out of that planet, I’ll tell you some things about Dronia. Basically, there’s a planet in Libra that hosts life similar to yours. You humans would call it Gliese something, but we don’t really like that name. There are seven species of intelligent life on Dronia; Elder, Wind Raiders - which I am -Wingiers, Makato, Human, Korovy, and Thresh.” “Hm,” said Ace, “How did humans get on Dronia?” “Various trips by the Dronese brought back an estimated 525 humans in the past hundred years.” “But surely the air would kill them?” “Not really. It’s almost the same as Earth’s, but with a few tiny changes here and there. The worst that would happen is a cluster headache when a human is exposed to Dronese air for the first time. You don’t seem to be having one, though, which is very good!” “Okay. What side effects could happen from breathing Dronese air?” “Many minor things can happen, like cluster headaches, hallucinations, shortage of breath, cramps, hyperthymesia, possible cerebral hypoxia, and a permanent cough.” “Wow. So, the same would happen if a Dronese breathed human air?” “Pretty much, but it'd be slightly worse.” “Ah, okay then.” Suddenly, the overcoat man said “Well, now that you’ve taught the little Irish man the basic things about Dronia, how about we put him in the cryo chamber so that he wouldn’t rot to the bone from the journey?” “Wait, wait,” said Ace, “What about you guys? Surely you would age from such a journey.” The black-haired scientist, who was drinking the contents of a coffee decanter the entire time, said “Actually, we age one human year every thousand years. This slowdown happens when we reach 18 human years old. Our normal life expectancy is 151,000 years, so the journey would barely affect us, if at all.” Ace said “Alright. If we’re going to Dronia, we might as well get put in that cryo chamber.” “Alright,” said the black-haired scientist as he handed Ace and his sister a uniform, “Put these on, and get into the chamber. Brother Areon will set up the chambers.” The brown-haired scientist got up, and opened the door to the cryo chambers. As Ace put on his uniform, he could barely hear an argument between Areon and the black-haired scientist. “Goddamnit, Areon, why didn’t you tell me about this?” “I’m sorry, Border, I didn’t know a Thresh parasite was in here!” “If it kills those two humans, I’ll slice your throat!” “No, Border! I’ll find the parasite and crush it in a while.” “Okay, but NO SLACKING OFF!” Ace heard the banging of metal, and the angered shouting of the man in the overcoat, telling Areon and Border to stop arguing, else they’d be turned into Thresh. After a while, Ace got into an empty pod, and yelled for Areon to close the chambers. He walked in, pressed a few buttons on a control panel in the middle of the room, and closed the doors to Ace’s capsule. He did the same to his sister’s capsule. And for over 3,000 years, Ace and his sister slept in a small Dronese ship with three other Dronese, which headed towards a planet that could or could not hold life. It was 7023 when Ace woke up. As he struggled to get out of his pod, he instantly knew something was wrong with the ship. The metal interior was slowly rusting, the lights were flickering or burnt out, and various items in the room were knocked over or were damaged. He walked over to his sister’s pod to try to wake her up, but noticed that she wasn’t there. Her pod was open, so Ace knew that she got out earlier than he did. As he tried to get into the commander’s room, he found out that the automatic door had something jammed into the side. It was too dark for him to tell what it was, however. As he inspected the remains of the pod room, Ace started to hear pained moaning from the rooms of the crewmen. He tried to open the door again, but realized that there was another object jammed to the side. This time, Ace grabbed ahold of whatever it was and pulled it out, which took a lot of force. After nearly stumbling to the ground, he got the door open, and entered the cabins. There was blood on the rusty floor, which gave off an odd smell that threw off Ace for a second. It didn’t take him long to notice the dying Areon on the left side of the hall. Ace rushed over to him, wondering what happened to him. He was cut up, like some clawed monster had attacked him. Areon was holding his hand over a wound. Ace could barely see the wound, but he knew that Areon was stabbed with some sword. "Ace, is that you?" "Yeah, it is. What happened?" "A Thresh got me..." "Wait, how did a Thresh get on board?" "Someone got infected by the parasite." "Really? Didn't I hear you argue with Border about it a long while ago?" "Yeah... I did find the parasite a few days after we froze you, and I tossed it into one of the cryo chambers. It broke out a few days ago, and it managed to kill Border and wound Turinse before I killed it off. Unfortunately, Turinse had become a Thresh and wounded me with a knife. I'll be fine for now." At this point, the appearence of a Thresh should be mentioned. Most Thresh have all-black eyes, no hair on their body, legs that acted like an emu's, and are around 9 feet tall. The Thresh first came around when an empire on the planet Dronia lost one of their biological warfare experiments, and has become a problem to the governments ever since. Thresh are hard to kill, since they use the bones of their victims as makeshift armor and weaponry. Ace, at the time, did not know this much about the Thresh. "Where is he now? More importantly, where's Siobhan?" "He's in the engine room, doing god-knows-what in there. As for her, she woke up when the Thresh parasite did. If it wasn't for it attacking Border, she wouldn't have been able to jump into an escape pod." "So, you're saying that Siobhan is somewhere in the reaches of space with a limited amount of air?" "Yeah. We are in Dronese territory, so a ship has most likely obtained the escape pod." At this point, Ace had an idea. "What would happen if I killed Turinse?" "I wouldn't advise it. Dronese are hard to kill if you're a human..." "I'm going to do it anyways. What is the quickest way to kill a Thresh?" "Try shooting it through the neck." Chapter 2: How to Kill a Thresh Ace, upon hearing Areon tell him about shooting a Thresh through the neck, checked the crew's quarters for a gun of some sort. The problem was that most of the containers in the room was written in Erottese, the language of the Dronese. It took a while before Ace found the one with the guns in them. He picked up the Dronese Assault Rifle, officially known as the 34DA-490OJD. The rifle had the appearence of a FN SCAR, but it weighed a couple of pounds less, and had a bayonet attached to it. Things to add soon When Ace witnesses the Fall of Earth: From a very early version of the story: I was born in 4074 in Drogheda, Ireland. Life was relatively peaceful, until one day. The day after I graduated from college (B.Tech), my sister (who is around 23) and I were vacationing in the coasts of Cork, when we saw a horrifying news report on the TV in a hotel we were staying in. “This just in from Dublin, Ireland, there are confirmed reports of a plane unlike any in this area…To everyone who lives in Dublin or the surrounding area, EVACUATE! We repeat, EVACUATE! We have confirmed that the plane is holding a nuclear bomb!” And that was the last we heard of the reporter before the screen turned to the color bars. Then, over the distance, several people were gasping. My sister and I were horrified, so we went out of the building we were in. Several mushroom clouds were viewable over the horizon. It had begun; The War to End All Wars. After the fifth one popped up in a time span of 5 minutes, we heard the sirens of police cars. The police were shouting about evacuating Ireland, but I had an appointment to go to today. I then said to my sister “We need to go to that meeting place in Corrán Tuathail. Remember?” She said “Oh yeah. But how are we gonna get there? The police have blocked the ways out, and its miles and miles to Corrán Tuathail if we walk!” I then pointed at one of the cop cars, which had unlocked doors and keys still in the wheel. Then, we ran towards the car, got in, and drove off. After being shot at a couple of times, we rammed the car through the barricade, and we were free. Well, we hoped we were. After 30 or so minutes of driving, I think we were about 5-6 miles out of town, when another nuke hit the town we were in. What the hell was the police thinking? I mean, that town was one of the largest in Ireland, and yet they don’t let people evacuate? Nice job. After hours of driving, we realized that the car was running low on gas, so we found a gas station. A man was waving at us as we drove in, but then I realized the prices were horribly low. Normally, it would be six dollar for a gallon, but it was reduced to 50 cents per gallon. As I paid for the gas, I talked to the man who was giving us gas. “Hey, did you see the explosions?” I asked. The man said “Well, what do you think?” We exchanged conversations, and after we left, I turned on the radio, to see if anyone was still alive. There was one man that was still around, Johnny Kornix, a famed Irish voice actor. He said “Well, if anyone’s still alive after those hours of hellfire, radiation and civil riots, I congratulate you. Now, back to the music” and after a couple seconds into the ads, Kornix pulled the ad, and said “I don’t need to play those ads, now do I? I mean, the companies I’m gonna sponsor are gone now, so have some music!” Ace heads to Dronia: The first thing I saw was the bright sun. I winced heavily, screaming, but then my eyes readjusted, and I could see normally in the sun. The second thing I saw was that the world went to hell. The grass was dead and brown, and the skies were covered with cloud, dimming the sun, but bright enough to make me fidget. Not only that, but it was cold. I mean, damn. It was 20 degrees cooler (in Fahrenheit) then it was normally, which meant one thing; a super volcano must have gone off. Not too sure though. As I descended down the mountain, my worries for my sister grew and grew. At first, I thought she was at the camp down the mountain, but as I got better looks at the camp, I realized she was not there. I then fully ran down to the camp, worried as hell, and found out something that calmed me down. My sister had made this camp, but she left a note saying that she was at this weird punk car. I then went to the parking lot, and saw a punk car. It seemed to be the police car that I had taken, but decked out in sheets of colored rusty metal, various markings, and a stand for a large gun. I opened the driver’s door, but I was horrified to find out that my sister wasn’t there. But then, I heard people screaming, and I turned to see three raiders run towards the car! One looked like he would challenge Bruce Lee at karate, one had an AK-47 and wore pajamas, and one wore metal armor, making him the slowest one. I then started PunkCar, and drove off. Due to wear over the years, the normally smooth road was very, very bumpy. I held on to dear life, hoping the car wouldn’t go off the road, but then I saw something fly over the road. It was a spaceship, about 127 feet in length, fly about 30 feet above the road. The raiders were firing at the spaceship (and failed to damage it; the bullets bounced off what looked like regular steel). All of a sudden, a turret on the bottom fired a beam of light at the raiders, causing them to disintegrate into piles of ash. I then clenched in fear, hoping that the spaceship would not fire the laser at me. It didn’t. Oh no, it fired what was kind of like a tractor beam you’d find in a stereotypical UFO, and sucked me up. As the car flew a couple of feet in the air, the doors closed, and I was in the spaceship. The thing was that it wasn’t something a first world country would make before the war, unless it was secret or a joint collaboration project. There were glass pods, and in them were a few humans knocked out cold or even dead… maybe. As I got out of the car, someone started running to me. As I saw the guy, I was relieved to find another human that wasn’t my sister. But as he got closer, I realized he wasn’t human. First off, he was much taller than one, and could pass off as a basketball player. When I saw his arms, I knew he wasn’t human, but an alien. He had various white enamel plates all over his forearms. I said “Who are you?” and the alien said “Who are YOU?” I said “I hate my real name, so please call me Walton Head. And why do you speak English?” The alien replied “Okay, Walton. We abducted you because we want to preserve the human race and various artifacts in our home planet, Dronia. Also, we speak this English language because a man in 2010 went to this Earth planet and picked up the language. It’s now the main language.” I came back with “Oh, then why isn’t there any artifacts other than the car?” Then, the alien turned on the lights, and two tables were visible of various artifacts. I then said “Well, how long is it to your home planet, Mr.…?” The alien answered “Areon Jaeyni.” I said “Well, Areon, how long is the trip?” Areon said “About five hours.” Then, I said “Well, what should I do?” Areon said “There’s not much to do in this ship. You can look at space, but there’s nothing to see. There’s a study area near the front of the ship, where you can read books and play chess.” I said “Alright, I’ll find something to do.” Then, I went my way to the study, and read some of the books. There, I learned more about the alien race that abducted me, the Dronese. Even though it wasn’t the most fun thing to do on a spaceship, it was good enough. The chess game was very well-crafted, based on the Drok Ano wars, with the white player being Drok Ano’s tribe, and the black player being the various Wind Raider tribes. Other than that, there wasn’t much to do. As the ship started getting faster (there were no effects inside due to some speed-reducing metal or something), I heard another engine roar up. The Berep-Zonz engine, an engine that powers up the Overdrive mechanism, was starting to activate. The Overdrive mechanism was recently pioneered by CoBalt, a Dronese company, and would enable the ship to create wormholes at the cost of a star going dark. I held on for dear life, hoping that the ship wouldn’t blow up or collapse. I also hoped that the star that would be sacrificed wasn’t the sun. Then, we went through the wormhole, unscathed. I then noticed that we were nearing a planet that looked like Earth, but as we got closer, it wasn’t Earth. We had reached Dronia. Then, I wondered what star we sacrificed to warp our way to Dronia. Then, Areon walked in, and said “Are you okay?” I said “Yeah. What star did you sacrifice to make the warp?” He said “You’d know it as Alpha Centauri. Was it your star?” I was relieved, and replied “No, it’s not. It ‘was’ the closest star to our solar system.” He said “Oh well, at least it wasn’t yours.” As we were getting closer to Dronia, I could barely see some of the space stations, satellites, and space ships the Dronese made. The Short Summary *November 7,023: Due to how slow the Dronese ship that carried him was, Alastar finally arrives in Dronia. Once his ship crashes in the southern Pratinei Mountains, he travels southwest to the state of Asamber. Category:In the Land of the Dronese Category:Non-Happy Appy stories